Free After Sundown by Shelly Thacker Page B

arms. She bit her lower lip, every movement causing a fresh wave of pain. Without another word, he carried her out of the examining room.
    In the darkened parlor, he settled her on a worn, velvet-upholstered couch. Then he tucked round pillows behind her shoulders and her head to prop her up and covered her with a counterpane. “Better?”
    She nodded, grateful for his kindness, relieved to be away from that room where she had lost everything that mattered to her, lost the last dream she would ever dream.
    Annie blinked tears from her eyes, giving in to the drowsiness of the laudanum, gazing down at the dying flames on the hearth. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Dr. Holt again.
    Couldn’t bear that he now knew the truth about who she was. What she had been. What she had done.
    He moved toward the fireplace and crouched in front of it, picking up a poker to stab at the charred logs. “Mrs. Owens and Mrs. Greer are upstairs preparing the guest room for you. The marshal... hell, I’m sure you overheard our shouting match out here. I don’t know where he went off to.” The doctor sounded disgusted.
    The clock on the mantel chimed seven times and he glanced up at it. “I told Rebecca I think it’d be best if you stayed here tonight, where I can keep an eye on you.” His voice gentled as he turned to face her. “Annie, you don’t have to tell me, it’s none of my business, but—”
    “You want to know... if it’s true,” she whispered, not looking up from the flames, every shallow breath hurting. “If I... killed James McKenna.”
    He remained silent a moment. “Some men,” he said, “need killing.”
    She lifted her eyes to his, surprised by the fierceness of his voice—and by what she saw in his expression.
    He wanted to believe in her, wanted to think the best of her.
    And she had to disillusion him.
    “Some men, maybe... but not James,” she whispered. “He had his faults. But he didn’t deserve to die.” She paused to take another shallow, aching breath. “He was good to me. And I cared about him.” And I thought he cared about me . A pain that no drug could ease wrenched her heart, and she dropped her gaze, staring down at the patterned wool rug on the floor. “I never wanted... to hurt him. I wouldn’t hurt anyone on purpose. It was an accident.” Her voice almost gave out. “I swear it was an accident.”
    She lay still, unable to bear what she would see now in Dr. Holt’s eyes: doubt, disapproval, shame. Perhaps anger that she had misled everyone in Eminence for so long. Maybe even pity that she had been foolish enough to care for the wealthy man who had bought and paid for her company.
    The crackling of the fire made the only sound.
    Finally she summoned her courage and looked up again.
    The doctor was simply regarding her with those soft, dove-gray eyes, his expression of concern and compassion unchanged. Then he nodded.
    Annie swallowed hard past a lump in her throat. She didn’t understand how he could just accept that she was telling the truth—without judging her, with no proof other than her word.
    Lucas McKenna would certainly never believe James’s death was an accident.
    And neither would the judge and jury back in St. Charles.
    “Dr. Holt—”
    “Annie, I’ve been telling you for the better part of two months now to call me Daniel,” he chided softly.
    She plucked at a loose thread on the counterpane, the steel manacles around her wrists jangling. “Daniel, I’m grateful for all you’ve done for me. And God knows I”—she inhaled a shaky, shallow breath—“don’t want to go back to Missouri to face a trial, but I... don’t think you should keep trying to help me. It’ll only get you into trouble—”
    “Trouble and I are old acquaintances. And I figure no one from Montana Territory is going to be riding down to help you,” he said, adding gently, “There is no family in Montana Territory, is there?”
    She shook her head, lowering her lashes,